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Monday, July 25, 2011

This blog post could well turn out to be to be the most boring I've ever written - but I think it's important. I want to write about something that robotics desperately needs: an industry standard interface specification (see I told you it was going to be boring).

Let me explain what I mean by talking about a fantastically successful standard called MIDI, that has without doubt played a significant role in the success of music technology. MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface. It provides an industry standard for connecting together electronic musical instruments, i.e. synthesisers, computers and all manner of electronic music gizmos. The important thing about MIDI is that it specifies everything including the physical plug and socket, the electrical signalling, the communications protocol and the messages that can be sent or received by MIDI connected devices. With great foresight MIDI's designers provided in the protocol both standard messages that all MIDI equipped electronic musical instruments would expect to send and receive - and recognise, but also customisable messages that manufacturers could specify for particular instruments and devices. In MIDI each instrument is able to identify itself to another device connected via MIDI; it can say, for example, I'm a Roland synthesiser model ABC. If the other device, a sequencer for instance, recognises the Roland ABC it can then access that instrument's custom features (in addition to the standard functions of all MIDI devices).

Robotics needs a MIDI specification. Let's call it RSIS for Robot Standard Interface Specification. Like MIDI, RSIS would need to specify everything from the physical plug and socket, to the structure and meaning of RSIS messages. Devising a spec for RSIS would not be trivial - my guess is that it would be rather more complex than MIDI because of the more diverse types of robot devices and peripherals. But the benefits would be immense. RSIS would allow robot builders to plug and play different complex sensors and actuators, from different manufacturers, to create new robot bodies and new functionality. Imagine, for instance, being able to take a Willow garage PR2 robot and fit a humanoid robot hand from the Shadow Robot Company. Of course there would need to be a mechanical mounting to physically attach the new hand, but that's not what I'm talking about here; I'm referring to the control interface which would be connected via RSIS. The PR2 would then, via the RSIS connection, sense that a new device had been connected and, using standard RSIS messages, ask the new device to identify itself. On discovering it has a handsome new Shadow hand the PR2 would then install the device driver (downloading it from the cloud if necessary) and, within a few seconds, the new hand becomes fully functional in true plug and play fashion.

Industry standards, and the people who create them, are the unsung heroes of technology. Without these standards, like UMTS, TCP/IP, HTTP or IEEE 802.11 (WiFi to you and me) we wouldn't have ubiquitous mobile phone, internet, web or wireless tech that just works. But more than that, standards are I think part of the essential underpinning infrastructure that kick starts whole new industry sectors. That's why I think standards are so critical to robotics.

Maybe a Robot Standard Interface Specification (or the effort to create it) already exists? If so, I'd very much like to hear about it.